BY Advocate.com Editors

December 01 2009 6:35 PM ET

China: Students use red ribbons to form "AIDS" on Monday, one day ahead of World AIDS Day at a school in Hanshan in east China's Anhui province. China warned in a notice for World AIDS Day that transmission of the disease through gay sex was gaining pace and called for health authorities nationwide to step up prevention work. China's health ministry estimates that at the end of 2009, 740,000 people were living with HIV in the country of 1.3 billion, and the latest data shows that 48,000 were infected this year, according to UNAIDS.